


One Hundred Steps Closer to God

by james



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mission Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 04:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/james/pseuds/james
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jake gets to be the hero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Hundred Steps Closer to God

**Author's Note:**

  * For [el_spirito](https://archiveofourown.org/users/el_spirito/gifts).



> Thank you to kayim and sian for betaing (or alphaing and betaing...)!

Jake propped one hand against the wall, squinting at the sign on the opposite hallway. He knew he was going in the right direction -- he'd memorized the blueprints and he'd had to repeat the directions back to Colonel Clay about fifteen duotrigintrillion times. Give or take a couple of zeros.

Knowing where he had to go wasn't the problem, but taking a moment to pretend he had to orient himself gave him the chance to catch his breath and shove away the pain spiking through his side. Not that anyone could see him, only the team's voices in his comm system reminded him he wasn't here on his own. The others were in the building next door, creating a diversion -- Jake hoped it would involved a few fires and explosions, if only because he had a running bet with Cougar as to which of them most narrowly escaped ending up on news footage.

When he had the chance, Jake hacked in and wiped or obscured the video before it could air, but the bet was for the original, unsullied-by-Jake's-hands footage. So far Jake was behind ten to three which was extremely unfair because five of those times he'd been off-duty and away from any military bases or missions or anything even remotely associated with something Clay could get pissed off about. It wasn't like he could have told his niece he couldn't attend her Science Fair, and when she'd won he'd been standing in the background being proud and as anonymous as it was possible for him to be.

And five a.m. Farming Reports never counted, as far as Jake was concerned because who ever watched those anyway? So the score was only six to three, but Jake hoped the team would get caught -- by journalists -- while he snuck around the basement of this building doing the real work.

He pressed his hand to his chest, thinking idly about how pressure in one spot could confuse the nerve endings into not screaming at him about the pain. Of course it didn't work, but Jake couldn't bring himself to touch lower down where the rifle butt had caught him in the ribs. The guard was sleeping it off above him in the stairwell, and now Jake had less time to work with than he'd planned on. He still ought to have plenty as long as nothing else slowed him down.

Jake glanced downward, wondering if the ribs were broken or just bruised and prayed fervently for bruised. He didn't test it by taking a deep breath, before simply pushing away from the wall and continuing to move as fast as he could towards the IT storage room located in the bottom-most basement, three floors below ground level.

What he should have done was argue better for Pooch coming down here and throwing a thermite grenade into the room to destroy the servers. At the time the Colonel had proposed his plan, Jake had found himself swayed by the necessity of Corporal Jake Jensen being the real hero of the mission; of course all the bad guys were supposed to have been drawn next door by the commotion leaving him with nothing more heroic to do than sneak in and push a few buttons. Hopefully it was only the one guard who'd stayed behind -- the building was supposed to be secured by high-tech systems and the guards had been told they could leave it to the experts. No one had told the guards that Jake was better than those experts at spoofing an all-clear signal.

Jake pressed on, trying not to stumble. He had a twelve-minute window to find the room and secure the hard-drive; three minutes to install the virus he'd prepped to wipe the servers and grab the backup drive from the room. It was supposed to be straightforward and easy, even by Losers' standards.

Jake should have known better. Nothing was ever easy. He inhaled slowly, wincing as the pain threaded through his lungs, then kept walking. He came to a corner and paused, listening for any sign of additional guards. There was no sound, so he whipped his head around the corner fast enough to get an image of the hallway but too fast for anyone to shoot his head off. Luckily there was no one there. Jake eased around the corner and spotted the storage room door.

The coded lock was a joke, even for him; he had the door open in far less than the thirty seconds he'd told Clay he might need. The rest of the team would be gearing up for retreat soon, knowing that by the time they extracted themselves from the chaos they would have created, Jake would have everything well in hand and would have only his own escape left to be made.

Jake sat down in the chair in front of the only workstation in the room, hissing as his ribs shifted. His fingers were already on the keyboard, typing before the rest of his brain had a chance to catch up. Access was almost as easy as the lock on the door, though there he had himself to thank. He'd broken in to the servers last night, given himself a backdoor. One, two, then three lines of code in the terminal window and he was in. The thumb-drive with his nasty surprise was in his front pocket, all he had to do was insert it and the program would auto-run.

His hand shook as he patted the pocket and felt nothing. Jake held himself still, because this _wasn't possible_ and he tried to twist around, check his other pockets but his ribs hurt, screaming at him as he checked his other pockets and dear God but it couldn't have fallen out when the guard had attacked him. There was no way he had the time to go back and find it -- even if he'd been able to move at faster than a stumbling walk.

Jake kept typing one-handed, searching the directories for every server, every hidden partition because he couldn't leave any untouched. The other hand slipped through his pockets as he frantically tried to think. He'd put it in that pocket, he'd stood there at the last briefing, showing it to the Colonel then he'd put it in this pocket and given Cougar a grin because he was going in alone while the others got to blow stuff up.

Jake exhaled, slumping for a second before his ribs protested. Because he'd remembered: Cougar had walked over and taken the thumb-drive back out, telling him he'd lose it, drop it, break it or something -- Jake still didn't speak Spanish, and he was never sure when Cougar was calling him an idiot or asking if he wanted to grab a beer. Jake patted his shirt, right in the middle of his chest where the small leather pouch was, holding the thumb-drive.

He was never, ever telling Cougar about this part. He was going to regale them all of his tales of triumph, beating the guard and finding the server room with minutes to spare. He was going to be the hero, dammit, and heroes didn't forget that they'd put the thumb-drive someplace safe so they wouldn't lose it.

He pulled it out and inserted it, then took just long enough to confirm it was working before he gathered his strength to stand. The room swayed a little, but not too badly and he stumbled towards the lockers. One of them held a small hard-drive, marked with a single red band. That was the one he had to take, return Uncle Sam's data to Uncle Sam and not let anybody else keep a copy of it.

Jake had already been told a hundred times over he wasn't allowed to break in and copy the data. Colonel Clay, General Bennett, even Sergeant Dunby in the motor pool had warned him about serving more time in the stockade. It wasn't fair that they kept accusing him, because of course he wasn't going to make a copy, but they couldn't expect him to have it in his hands and not take a peek inside, just to see what had been stolen.

With the hard-drive firmly in his hand and the servers being wiped clean, Jake tapped his comm. "Colonel, I've got the package and I'm headed back out." He paused, breathing as silently as he could, knowing any hisses of pain would transmit -- but might be mistaken for simply being winded. Then he wondered, "Did we have a code word for that? I've forgotten. Colonel, the eagle has landed. No, taken off -- I'm leaving the building with the thing. I'll meet you at rendezvous."

There was a pause, which Jake could tell was Clay rubbing his hand across his forehead. Then a clipped, "Roger. Will meet at rendezvous. Good work."

Jake grinned and nodded. Who da man? He was da man!

He gave himself a fist pump -- a short one, because it really fucking hurt to lift his arm, then he turned and proceeded as fast as he could back down the corridor. The hall was shifting a little, back and forth but the floor was smooth so all he had to do was shuffle, one foot then the other, and hope that the stairs decided to take pity on him when he reached them. The pain in his side was getting worse, no doubt about it, and as he pulled open the stair access door he stopped, listening for the guard he'd left taped and gagged. There was no sound, so he got one foot on the step and discovered that, in fact, climbing two flights stairs back up to ground level hurt just enough to make him black out.

 

~~~

The Colonel wasn't very happy. Jake didn't need to be fully awake or conscious to realize; he'd seen that particular look often enough that he could recognize it in his sleep. Which, he thought, maybe he was. His brain was a little foggy and the Colonel was standing there quietly, arms folded, glaring at him while he waited politely for Jake to finished opening his eyes.

The thought of a polite Colonel Clay was scary enough it jolted Jake the rest of the way awake. He looked around and recognized a hospital room -- something he'd not seen nearly as often as the Colonel's mad face, but still, often enough.

Jake opened his mouth to ask what had happened, then suddenly noticed nothing hurt. He grinned, and Clay rolled his eyes.

"I should wait until the painkillers have worn off to yell at you," the Colonel said. "I'll be wasting my breath if I do it now."

"You could practice," Jake offered, and he looked around the room. No TV, no laptop -- what was he supposed to do to entertain himself? Clay should know by now not to leave him to his own devices -- the nursing staff in military hospitals were never afraid to threaten to shoot him _again._

"I have a feeling I'd be wasting my breath anyhow," Clay said, sighing. "So, the short version: you should have told me you were injured. We could have easily spared someone to come in after you immediately."

Jake tried to wave his hand. "Didn't think it mattered. I got the data wiped. Is that a bunny?" Had they stuck him in a kids' room, with pictures of rabbits on the walls? Or was it just Clay's hat? No, wait, Clay didn't wear hats.

The Colonel paused, giving Jake a strange look, then simply said, "That isn't your decision to make. You report all injuries sustained during the course of a missi-- Jake, what the hell are you doing?"

"Does that have Wi-Fi?" Jake waved his hand at what might have been a PDA. Or maybe a shoe? It was hard to tell from this angle.

It was possible they had him on very good painkillers, because now the bunny was chewing on the PDA. Shoe. Whatever.

Clay looked from where he was pointing, back to him, then up at the bag of fluids hanging above Jake's bed. "I'm going to make Pooch sit with you," he said, then turned and walked towards the door. Jake waved when he stopped and looked back. Whatever the Colonel had been about to say, he simply closed his mouth again and left.

Jake took another look at the might-have-been-a-PDA and tried to figure out how to reach it. He could break into the hospital records and get himself released before nightfall, then maybe Cougar and Pooch wouldn't count today against him in the Days Hospitalized tally.


End file.
